100 Game Changers, Millions of Votes, Here Are Your Ultimate 12

Last month we announced HuffPost's 2010 Game Changers -- 100 innovators, visionaries, and leaders who are changing the way we look at the world and the way we live in it. And we asked you to weigh in on who the Ultimate Game Changer is in each of our 12 categories: Politics, Entertainment, Style, Tech, Business, Travel, Green, Sports, Food, Education, Media, and Impact (where we salute those changing the game when it comes to philanthropy and service).

The response was tremendous. You cast over 3 million votes. Thank you!

Now it's time to reveal your picks for the Ultimate 12.

They are an eclectic mix of those accustomed to the spotlight and those who have been working under the radar. And there were more than a few surprises. For instance, despite the presence of a number of superstar athletes in Sports, you voted in Amy Palmiero-Winters & Catherine Hughes, two below-the-knee amputees who show that disabilities need not be an end to dreams of athletic triumph.

And while our Style Game Changers included style and fashion icons such as Tom Ford and Paulina Porizkova, and red carpet regulars Ashley and Mary Kate Olson, you selected Joe Bozich, who runs a garment factory in the Dominican Republic that pays its workers a living wage.

So check out the slideshow below to see who the HuffPost community selected as the Ultimate Game Changers.

And it won't be long before we start putting together next year's list of Game Changers, so be on the lookout for those people who are pushing the envelope in their fields -- who are willing to look at things and take the risk of saying, "I think I have a better way."

Congratulations again to our 100 HuffPost Game Changers, who we will be celebrating at a party next Thursday (watch for pictures and coverage of the event). And a special round of virtual applause for the Ultimate 12.

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ULTIMATE GAME CHANGERS

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Changed the game by ... sticking to his guns and insisting on real financial reform. The former chairman of the Federal Reserve has long warned that the new breed of bankers took things too far. But, even as chairman of the President's Economic Advisory Board, it took a political scare (in the form of Scott Brown) for the White House to stop ignoring him. President Obama eventually proposed what became known as the "Volcker Rule": if banks want customers' money, they can't use it to gamble on risky trades. Republicans and bankers protested and had some success punching loopholes in the rule, but, in the end, Volcker's gravitas carried the day. Financial reform ended up a stronger bill than many expected (Volcker graded it a B), and one of the most respected men in finance demonstrated that he won't stop fighting for the little guy.
He said it: "I’ve been there — as regulator, as central banker, as commercial bank official and director — for almost 60 years. I have observed how memories dim. Individuals change. Institutional and political pressures to “lay off” tough regulation will remain — most notably in the fair weather that inevitably precedes the storm. ... We need to face up to needed structural changes, and place them into law. To do less will simply mean ultimate failure."
Must-click link: Paul Volcker's Big News Page

Changed the game by ... waging an all-fronts war on poverty. Canada is the founder of Harlem Children's Zone, a nonprofit that adheres to the belief that the only way to fight poverty is to take on all the issues surrounding it. Canada's group administers a "Baby College" that teaches parents how to foster brain development, offers family counseling, has a free health clinic, and operates a rigorous charter school that runs from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Canada's goal is to replace the failed systems of the past—especially underachieving, unambitious schools—with a new "conveyor belt" to the middle class, reliant on institutions that can step in and provide poor urban children the social education and stimulation that kids in the suburbs routinely receive. His work on how class can affect the brain development of toddlers has revolutionized how policymakers think about combating poverty.
He said it: “These boys are failing, but I believe that it is the responsibility of the adults around them to turn these trajectories around,... All of us must ensure that we level the playing field for the hundreds of thousands of children who are at risk of continuing the cycle of generational poverty. The key to success is education.”
Must-click link: Harlem Children's Zone's site

Changed the game by ... being a tireless champion for America’s beleaguered middle class -- and forcing Congress to acknowledge that banks and credit-card companies were ripping off consumers. The plain-spoken Harvard Law professor was tapped in 2008 to run the Congressional Oversight Panel, an agency responsible for monitoring the Wall Street bailout, and she used that position to shine a light on the shadowy bailouts and take to task those who doled out hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars with little strings attached. Her idea for an agency that would regulate financial products such as credit cards and mortgages in the way that the FDA regulates drugs was eventually embraced by lawmakers and the White House. Banking lobbyists fought desperately to derail the proposal but in the end the wisdom of Warren’s idea prevailed – and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was enacted into law.
She said it: "There should never be a doubt about the point of any government action: it should always be to help families directly, or help markets in ways that help families. If that isn't clear, I think the action is wrong, or the description of the action is wrong."
Must-click link: COP.Senate.Gov

Changed the game by ... fighting the food regulators who failed her son. In August 2001, Kowalcyk's perfectly healthy two-year-old son Kevin got E. Coli poisoning from a hamburger and died. Kowalcyk and her husband were devastated, but instead of grieving in silence they fought for answers. They traced the contamination back to a company that had failed a U.S. Department of Agriculture Salmonella test for the second time a year earlier. Almost a month after Kevin got sick, the company finally recalled the E. Coli-tainted meat. Shocked at the gaps in the system, Kowalcyk, a trained biostatistician, joined with her mom to found the Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention. They conduct data-heavy research and push for companies to stop shifting the blame on consumers; Kowalcyk herself joined a USDA oversight board in 2005 and has served on two National Academy of Science committees. She has been a key advocate for tighter regulation of the food industry (draft legislation has passed the House), and was prominently featured in the 2008 documentary "Food Inc."
Key kudos: This past August, Yoko Ono announced that Kowalcyk was one of four recipients of the Lennon Ono Grant For Peace, a biannual $50,000 award. Kowalcyk will go to Iceland in October to receive the honor.
Must-click link: The Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention's site

Changed the game by ... coining the phrase "blood dolphin." O'Barry, a longtime activist and star of the Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove," has been the force in raising awareness of the plight of dolphins. Not only does he fight to close parks across the world that exploit sea creatures, but he risked his life to expose the yearly dolphin slaughter at the Taji national park in Japan. He was undaunted by the attacks from the dolphin slayers and the Japanese government itself, and led a campaign on and off the screen to stop the annual massacre that leaves 20,000 dolphins dead. In August Animal Planet released a new mini-series, "Blood Dolphins," that further explored the killings.
How it all started: O'Barry originally made his name as a trainer on the set of "Flipper," the popular 1960s sitcom. He was appalled by the treatment of dolphins in captivity, and in 1970 founded the Dolphin Project to free as many dolphins as he could. "We have been brainwashed by this society to think dolphins belong in a concrete tank doing tricks for us," he told the Los Angeles Times in August. "Flipper was a blood dolphin."
Must-click link: SaveJapanDolphins.org

Changed the game by ... staying a step ahead, even while missing a leg. Palmiero-Winters, age 37, and Hughes, age 8, are both below-the-knee amputees who have received artificial legs from the cutting-edge company, A Step Ahead. They are accomplished runners who embody the ways in which disabilities have become merely an obstacle to athletic triumph. In 2009, Palmiero-Winters's success as an ultra-marathoner (she runs more than 100 miles at a time) won her the James Sullivan award for best amateur athlete in the United States, and this past spring she became the first amputee to make the U.S. World Track Team. Hughes is just one example of the next generation of amputee runners, a successful triathlete on the junior circuit. Despite being one of the youngest competitors in the Aspire 5k/10K in Plainview, New York, at age 7 she finished the 5k in third place.
She said it: Palmiero-Winters: “If I had two normal legs and I run a race, yeah, it’s just winning a race. But to me, it’s much more. It’s having other people see you, see what I did face, we all have different adversities, and I’m just like everybody else."
Must-click link: The site for ASPIRE, the non-profit organization that helps amputee athletes

Changed the game by ... grabbing the vampire squids of the financial meltdown by the throat. In a media landscape dominated by corporations, Taibbi's long-form business reporting, a combination of muckraking and lacerating commentary, is a necessary jolt to the system. Never mincing words, he famously dubbed Goldman Sachs a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." He punched his arm through the loopholes of financial reform and deemed it "a hack job, a C-minus effort." Eloquent and profane, Taibbi is using his reporter’s eye and gonzo-poet’s imagery to shine a spotlight on the dark corners of post-crash America.
He said it: "If I go online today to HaveNoLifeAndBetOnSports.com and bet fifty dollars on the Bucks against the Celtics tonight, I'm a criminal. But some gazillionaire firm in New York can legally bet against the United States of America in unlimited amounts in a trade that has nothing to do with anything, but a guess about how many other people will make the same bet. Jesus, are we a weird country."
Must-click link: Taibbi's blog

Changed the game by ... funding movies with a message. In 2004, Skoll, a billionaire from his stint as eBay's first president, decided that socially-conscious entertainment wasn't an oxymoron and founded Participant Media to bankroll storytelling that encourages activism. Since then, it's seemed at times as if every good, smart movie with a political edge—"An Inconvenient Truth," "Charlie Wilson's War," "Syriana," "Food, Inc.," "The Informant," "The Cove," etc.—has relied on Participant's help. And the good work doesn't stop after the credits roll; Participant organizes on behalf of the causes promoted by the movies. After "The Cove" was released, for example, Participant led a multinational letter-writing campaign against the slaughter of dolphins in Taji.
He said it: "We find two or three key issues that come out of issues in film, find NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) working in that space, perhaps leaders in that space, and partner with them to build a campaign around issues in film. 'The Soloist' was about a schizophrenic, homeless man, so we took the issue of homelessness and created campaigns to raise food for the homeless. These campaigns for us are the key — the reason for the movie is the campaign."
Must-click link: ParticipantMedia.com

Changed the game by ... refusing to stay trapped on the tarmac. Hanni, a real estate agent and mother of two, had little interest in politics until December 2006, when she and her family were forced to stay in an airplane stuck on the tarmac for eight hours. She was outraged, and within months thousands had signed a petition she wrote. Her congressman, Mike Thompson, quickly introduced a law forcing airlines to let passengers off stranded planes after three hours, and she became the face of the passengers' rights movement, founding flyersrights.org. She was the force behind the Boxer-Snowe act and other regulations that limit the ability of airlines to rip customers off. With senators by her side, and her yearly report card keeping tabs on bad customer service, airlines are starting to think twice about ignoring the needs of their passengers.
She said it: "Passengers don't want to be treated like cargo — they want to be treated like paying passengers...Passengers feel completely powerless trapped in a sealed metal tube with no access to goods and services, and no way to get off."
Must-click link: FlyersRights.org

Changed the game by ... bringing down an amazing tablet from the Cupertino mountaintop. Apple’s market value is now well above $200 billion, making it bigger than Microsoft or Google. This year, it sold three million iPads within months of its launch, raking in more than $3 billion in profits this past Spring alone, while also commencing the age of the tablet and re-affirming Apple’s spot as the tech tastemaker.
Fun fact: The idea for the iPad actually came before the iPhone. According to Jobs, he had the idea for a tablet years ago. After an Apple developer built a prototype, Jobs declared: “My god, we can build a phone with this!”
Must-click link: Steve Jobs's Big News Page

Changed the game by ... paying foreign garment workers a living wage. Bozich, who owns a leading supplier of logo-covered college t-shirts and sweats named Knights Apparel, recently opened a factory in the Dominican town of Villa Alta Gracia on the grounds of a former Korean cap factory that paid minimum wage. Bozich pays about three and a half times that, and has allowed workers to unionize, deciding that it’s worth the cut in his profit margin. This coming fall, over 250 campuses will sell Knights t-shirts made in Alta Gracia (at the same price as before), and United Students Against Sweatshops will pass out fliers encouraging students to buy them. University leaders are ecstatic—the Duke director of licensing told the New York Times that the new factory "sometimes seems too good to be true.”
He said it: “I started thinking that I wanted to do something more important with my business than worry just about winning market share."
Must click-link: The Alta Gracia Project

Changed the game by ... taking the world to school. In 2009, Reshef founded the University of the People, a Pasadena-based project that streams lectures and assignments to people around the world, allowing them to take college classes online for less than $100—and ultimately get accredited degrees. At this point, there are 500 students from 100 countries discussing topics and meeting regularly in online forums. Reshef is aware that not everyone has easy access to the Internet; UoPeople is preparing communication centers in Zimbabwe, the Dominican Republic, Bangladesh, Haiti, Liberia, and Palestine. "There are hundreds of millions of people around the world unable to afford higher education," he told Fast Company. "We are offering them an alternative."
How it all got started: Reshef worked in the for-profit side of education, when he joined the Israeli test-prep company Kidum in 1989. Under his leadership, it became the largest education-services company in Israel, with revenues of over $25 million before Kaplan bought it in 2005. “I’ve made enough money," he now says. "It’s time to give back.”
Must-click link: UoPeople.org